Michelle Elisburg

Michelle Elisburg is a pediatrician in Louisville who loves to dance like no one is watching. Born in Washington, DC, she lived most of her life on the East Coast before moving to Kentuckiana for her husband’s residency in emergency medicine at U of L. Their family lives across the river in Southern Indiana, where the Midwest is now home.

Michelle has been serving our community for 17 years as a pediatrician at the Family Health Centers, a Federally Qualified Health Center, with the mission to provide quality medical care regardless of ability to pay. Many patients are refugees and immigrants, speaking a multitude of languages, creating her party icebreaker, “I can say hello in 20 languages.” Michelle enjoys the cultural diversity of her patients and families, learning much from them, as she helps children stay healthy and develop to their full potential.

Michelle is involved in diverse community activities reflecting her Jewish values of Tikkun Olam (to repair the world), tzedakah (giving charity) and tzedek (justice). She is an active member of The Temple, President of the Louisville Hadassah Chapter, and founding member of the Louisville Jews for Justice. She serves on the Food Literacy Project board, mentors medical students, and manages the dresses and tuxedos for the school orchestra, just to keep the mom/work life balance.

A Dancing With the Stars fan since its inception, Michelle has never missed a season! In college, she rock-a-billied to community swing dancing, and today her family often finds her dancing through the house. Zumba is her current public dancing outlet, so she is thrilled to join Let’s Dance Louisville, while supporting this important community resource providing food to those in need. As stated each year in the Passover Seder, “Let all who are hungry come and eat.”

Michelle’s two-physician family includes two creative and independent daughters and a grumpy older rescue dog. Neither daughter is interested in medicine as a career, after listening to the dinner conversations, but spontaneous dancing is celebrated as a family. As the Hopi Indians teach, “to watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak.”

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